Here’s a comforting thought: Everything in your professional world (industry, company, your job) could disappear tomorrow. Which is why everyone, no matter who, needs to have a Plan B. You know, what to do if the whole enchilada just goes up in smoke.

Maybe your company doesn’t do annual reviews. Maybe they are supposed to but do a poor job at it. The thing is, feedback can be very useful — ideally, your boss should be checking in with you all the time.

But life is seldom ideal. Your boss in particular might need a little nudge. If so, here are some tips for you to pass on.

It’s the holidays and you want to enjoy them and you really do deserve a break and so you tell yourself it’s okay to just, um, put that job search on hold until — oh, say, January? — but, guess what, this is actually a very bad idea, because the holidays are primo time to job hunt. Really.

Short answer: they care about themselves–their needs, their problems, their deadlines, their schedules, their budgets, their head counts, and on and on.

Boo-hoo, you might say. I don’t care. None of that stuff is my problem. I have plenty worries of my own, thank you very much.

But if you are looking for a job, guess what, dear reader, you do need to care.

You may (understandably) feel that your job search is all about you. Your skills and experience, your cover letter, your resume, your references–the focus is all on you.

However, employers don’t care about any of that. They are too busy being all about them! That is why the cleverest job hunters, the most successful job hunters, leverage this little fact of human nature by positioning their job search in terms of their target employers’ needs. Everything they do is thought through from the perspective of the hiring employer — starting with the cover letter, which is why this week’s Seattle Times post is entitled “A good cover letter is not about you.”

However, nothing is more annoying than being turned down for a job because, they say, you “are overqualified.” Shouldn’t this be your decision? If you have an advanced degree in rocket science (are there such degrees?) and it suits you to apply for a barista job, shouldn’t that be your call?

Unfortunately, the answer to all these questions (maybe even the are-there-rocket-science-degrees one) is no.

Is there anything you can do? Well, yes, there are ways to tackle this problem and they can be found over at the Seattle Times site this very day: “When they say you’re overqualified.”